For those who have not followed along; I have posted 2 other excerpts of a recent story that hopes to see itself in a published collection of short work. The story is called ‘The Coroners Squirting Flower.’ Here is the third excerpt.
I should be doing my Incredible Pushups right now. I should be listening to WDTIX Norohosquet with all my windows open, combing my hair in the breeze with all my posters keeping me company. Most of them are signed. I wouldn’t sell them. I don’t get that. Why? Money? Just look at all these! Touch them. My god; every story, they have one. It wasn’t just…ring it up, sealed, and on to the next thing. Stories, if you can make people feel that they can insert themselves, drive the last leg, crash in front of yours almost unscathed, give you time of day, they give it to you. I’m trying anything, therapy is sort of working.
I should move back to Watkins Glenn, back to New York. Maybe Crystal Dave is still painting pictures of Elvira after the accident, and making up card games that only we know how to master. Crystal Dave and Sam, what a pair we were! Brunko junkies! Everything seemed so much sweeter back then, probably because I didn’t need or want much at all, or thought I couldn’t help but notice how everything works, how everything doesn’t work…that smug –callous force filed. I am alone, then–now, everyone. I know, sweet sunset hand walking alone, alone. That’s fine. I’m ok. I’m not upset. Look, I’m smiling here.
I’m living alone now. I use to have a roommate, a girl friend, a mother, a neighbor who used the word ‘nigh’ too often. If it was getting dark (for example,) he would say, well nigh sunset. I hated that, but would bet with others, other neighbors, when he would say it, the frequency, things like that. Put some dollars together. Here that fucking word, grab my pen, or pocket recorder, keep tabs. I got really into statistics. That’s how it got started, the gambling games, in its budding adolescent stage. I was no ordinary gambler. It really wasn’t so much about the money.
I was most famous for betting on the clothing worn by a Chinese kid I went to college with. There were only a few items of clothing he would wear. His roommate said his clothing consisted of a handful of generic staple items, and it became fun and easy to bet on what the exact assemblage of these items would be, right down to the occasional scarf or hat, or footwear. It started as a joke, something to bet on in Helyar hall as the turdy little cliques spiraled into one another, something amusing to bet on that could draw on most people’s tendencies to want to annihilate other people’s right to privacy, feed that need to be ‘energized’ by others drawbacks, or humiliation.
Look at all the shows on TV now, look at all the boost-drinks in their bullet like containers. This was before all that, but it was there to be tapped anyway, on a personal level. Look at all this need to be jilted and stacked with the love of viewing, witnessing the failure of others. Bet on it America…
But I won’t go into that game about C. Ray just now. He was so self-conscious, more than the average kid that age is. I should be listening to WDTIX, maybe open this one window in my kitchen, the one with a screen with a gash in it. Fucking black bored flies and this gash, and this wind…and they all get in. You never know, maybe Chin’s listening. They play a lot of stuff he listed to, even back then. I know about this shit. I bugged the room. I had all sorts of ways of getting listening devices in there. I knew all the RD’s and they would bet on my games. So I knew what Ray listened to.
I won’t listen to Low’s show. I’ve had it with her and her fancy exile exotica shit. It’s been over a year since we were together, but we never did that, got really close in that potentially very close way, but no. I listen to the station for her, but not just for her. I saw her picture on WDTIX’s website, combed her bloggy with my right index finger rolling down to see every word, lit up. I Snogged Searched for her Pickys on every elevated glumble sit at the pooter, just one picture please, someone flick-flick for my flick flicks…..find her, some time, some party, pissy post it, some event, a BBQ? Give me her face, give me her face with BBQ on it, share, share, it’s about sharing you fucks….
It’s’ summer now, and now, and keep on coming, and ending. Low could have won. Both of us might have won together. I had just the thing, the right rules, nothing so stringent. It was a great game, better than Chinny Ray’s Wardrobe, the game I kept secret with the Chinese kid in college, selling little white cards with certain clothing items belonging to this kid to tick off, sections, made a lot of money, had to take pictures of the kid clandestinely as he walked out of his room, reveal what he wore at a certain time in a certain place. It got more sophisticated. A lot of people bet. It was hush. I kept it very hushed up. It grew in popularity, the thing to do. The technology wasn’t all there back then, it was not cheap. I made good cash. I got pretty popular. I got some pants down because of my rep for that. I remember my friend Hammy telling me, someone wants Sam’s lovin, and I was ready for it. I started Chinny Ray’s Wardrobe.
It got crazy. The way people would follow C. Ray around campus. He didn’t go to many parties, and people were pretty decent about keeping this shit quiet (decent? Well no but…), but how did he not catch on? I’m laughing over it. Eventually, word got out, but school was over, was just about over, he left, transferred… I almost really fucked him up. He thought I was up to something that I wasn’t up to, but didn’t know what I was really up to. I almost had to, but didn’t. But it wasn’t Chinny that reported my actions; it was someone profiting on the game, Mumbly Necks. Gary, this guy Gary… He was a fucking rat, a piece of shit. What he did really pissed me off.
I needed to get away from DJ Low. That’s what I called her. I don’t do pills. I only speak English. It’s fine. I’m ok with it. I really only called into Gorga’s Irascible Monday show recently. I’m talking call in show now. This is/was my favorite call in show of all time. I became obsessed, well-nigh, fuck me! Love/Hate… God, I torture myself. Living alone works, and I’m not obsessed with anything. I’m getting better, seeing someone. We all need someone to really listen to us. Now-a-these-days… come on! You know it’s just all bullshit, relations, what passes, unless it dates from an earlier time or something like that… I mean, it’s getting worse, flat, everything becoming that way, the more listlessly rolled over by rickety moments of blithe happy-waddle, the more you won’t know woe where it helps, where it moves you through shit, and you get a damn chance to scrape bottom, to know how to be king of that whipping bottom… is how you….
I’m not a smart ass. I spend a lot of time alone, and what else should I do? I should probably sculpt something, and then, I don’t know what. A lot of smart ones knew real woe, and they went after it, not to flagellate themselves with it like bonko vipers gone dafty-doo, and there’s more than one way, much more…and now-a-these-days…not so bad. I’m getting off my ass in a minute.
My speaker wires are all fucked about. They are not working properly, probably sabotaged, cleaning people probably did it. But who hires them? I can’t concentrate. My apartment’s a drag. If I see something out of place, can’t really concentrate then. Have to get on this and that, before I can settle down to this and that. Delphi Two is a drag. It’s a city I wish could be rolled off into a poster, chucked in the back of a truck. I’ll smoke this joint, and get lost listening to a few songs on WDTIX, or maybe I’ll put on a record, as I prefer to do during dinner. Keep the fucking poot off.
All these cities, most, becoming just awful movie sets, you wish you could just wheel them off into the end of the day, no one’s looking. Bye city, extreme western cruel unthinking kindness, bye! Nice to see ya….Hi’ya! Go, leave now, take off your cloudy face, your Mayor welcome signs, spew yourself over the precipice where the dumb cartoons play chicken with tawdry devils in drag.
But I do love the main library of Delphi Two. It’s always beautiful. It never mocks, or makes you think it runs away late at night with its cold cream, candy bars and condoms tucked into its carpet bag. City, that I live in, do you sprout stout heavy library legs and run away from you’re population when everyone is distracted, asleep in whatever way? There’s a statue of Gillian Trudeau giving the finger to a jackbooted thug representing the Klacka Clan of our frontier era. I’m a Scoloneian, and that still means something to me, certain things to be proud of and ashamed of, just like myself. I’m not crazy. I don’t care. People will try to hijack what something like Scoloneian is supposed to be all about. Let them. I won’t listen, and no one will make me. It means what it means to me and that’s it.
Proud Gillian Trudeau done in bronze, not dwarfed into a stiffening pusillanimity by its scale or execution, its energy unbitten by its environs, but rather strengthened. I love it. I like sculptures a lot. It’s one of those things I think about a lot, and need to find ways to talking about it more elaborately with myself and others. Trudeau can’t be dicked into anyone’s slimy ideological narrative graft.
This statue sits off on the east side entrance. That’s where I snack, and take notes. I take a lot of notes. I’m staring at them now. There are note takers that come around the same time. I won’t talk to them. But many of them are with me. I feel them with me. I bite into my white nectarine, clean my chin.
I saw Gary at the main library once. First, initially, when I saw him; I just wanted to throttle that neck breaking devil. Had he followed me to Delphi Two? Impossible! Possible> what was his game? Was this his game? Were people betting on me without me knowing, betting on some ordinary thing I did everyday…looking in on me, following me?
Gary. Curd freezing dick, he cheated. He placed a camera or something in Ray’s new room. Inside the fucking room, audio is an advantage, but a fucking camera. That sonofabitch knew. He knew what he Ray would be wearing. I’m not the only one who knew he was cheating. Taciturn Swede, wheedling bumpko…! The whistle was blown. Gary cheated me out of a lot of money. He played it smart, with his deaf bullshit. It wasn’t just about money. I know I’ve said that before about other things. This is all serious, not some squirting flower trick raised from the dead pocket of tired jokes. I’m not throwing a bucket of bloody chicken in your family’s face, as they open the door with benign expectations or something, looking for a fucking tip. This is not the sort of thing I do, what I’m gunning for. Expectorating gods and their fucking hankies all swinging in the air….
I hadn’t forgotten about Gary. No way. I did not approach him that first sighting at my favorite entrance to Delphi 2’s main library. It’s over. There had to be peace. I’m not a man who needs vengeance, who is a lifetime enemy. I don’t think I am. My rocks don’t get off on that sort of thing now. That’s not to say that what Gary did isn’t hard-etched and sliming up my mind. Things are never so easy, so clear, so bullshitless and clear, so this and that and stop and go, and new and end, and hi you dumb fuck… friends?
Gary says he saw me at the Leg Up with his girlfriend. I didn’t even know he was in town when he told me this. I suspected he was. I thought I suspected he was now, after he told me he saw me getting shit faced at Leg Up. He said he was calling me, and I looked at him an ignored him. I have a hard time understanding him. I detected his voice as he called Gorga’s show though. I know he can disguise his voice pretty well, despite his hearing problem. He really fucked me, got me expelled, eventually. I thought we would…
I’m calling Gorga’s show. I would eventually. The topic is what you would bring back that has been lost. The show is an hour long. I had to tell Gorga what I would bring back. I waited and I waited, my apartment was getting sick in front of me, its fixtures and furniture accumulating a born again pallor, a lopsided heaviness, its vistas shorn even of the few charming portions of its insipid and squalor fuck-all. I waited. My black phone, my heavy round fists, my irritated red leg… born in New York State, my leg, off the ottoman, TOOT, on the Ottoman. I can’t stand this city. I’m not usually so angry… anymore.
People called in. I waited for someone to pick up. There was no busy signal, just interminable ringing. My number’s blocked. God damn it do I hate those sonofabitch screeners. It’s not a joke to me. I need to speak out. I’m going to record myself. I recorded myself. I’m listening on the phone to Gorga’s show, very still with heavy black phone, worse window in my house, not quite staring at anything, or looking at anything, as in most of the time, and that’s also bumming me out, listening to this:
Bring back The Battle of the Network Stars. That TV show. Remember The Chips guys Gorga, and Threes Company, that tug of war with the delicious mud in the middle at the end of the program? (Laughs, recognition, laughs) All the stars tugging the others into the mud at the end, the final part… All those shows, sometime in the 1970’s and 80’s….Howard C, and Lynda Davis, and Michael J. Fox! Remember! Bring that back! And do you remember the cartoon spinoff, ‘The Laff Olympics,’ what else! Ha. (Bleeps)
Gorga was enjoying herself. The calls were all fairly awful, but she was in great spirits, and that kept me in my mind, in my spot of mind where everything is allowed, there is no shame dungeon to be led to. I was ready to call in. I had heard enough people talking about what they would like to bring back which was now lost, irredeemably lost…. the regional fast food hamburger that could never be found again, and the genuine poignancy of Polaroid not around to make their unique product anymore, no one buying the technology, and putting it back on market again. The callers kept calling in. It was all light hearted, not so terribly really. I was ready to call.
Games usually make me angry, ever since I was a kid. They overjoyed me to. Losing itself did not make me so angry. That I can handle no matter what anyone says. It’s the cheaters. They don’t even know my games, the ones I make up all the time in the middle of the game, my game, but they learn how to cheat first. There cheating on games they don’t know about yet! Fuck if they don’t. I’ve always enjoyed playing a variety of games that I have made up. I’ve been doing this since I was just a shoot in the shade of itinerant papas. All my fathers were wandering trees. My Mama wouldn’t let me cheat. She would get angry with me. I was always a sore loser. That’s bullshit! I change significantly when I play my games.
That’s the story. That becomes my story. No, not anymore, I won’t. I don’t know how. Or… how do you play? Then they cheat. They cheat me. I don’t want money from winning my games. The idea is abhorrent to me if understood as the prime goal. I don’t need to win. But people should play the way these games were designed to be played, the way I designed them. Sometimes the games are inside. I don’t need any dice. I’ve studied the classics. I’ve read the Roman emperor Claudius’s guide for playing dice. I’m a tutor at a learning center for adults. That’s my job, all sorts of subjects I’m good at. This is what I’m thinking about as I hold the line, listening to some of the callers call in Gorga’s show.
I did well in college. I taught at a few smaller universities in Western, NY. I was expelled from a university in that same region. Expelled! It was towards the end of my second year. I mentioned this before. It was Gary the neck breakers doing. I was sputum in there fucking mouths, or foul air bellowed out from the cracked mouth of a pathetic institution. That’s how I was treated.
Waiting to hear the next call, Gorga laughing, always laughing, low, and harmless laughing— erotic, but simple, simple and erotic. I sit by the radio. My radio wants to drag me to the floor and make me roll with it, taunting me, pulling at me. I sit by my computer. My computer wants to teach me a lesson. My computer wants to take away my fluids. My fluids, my fluids want to hijack my veins and demand a ransom from my heart. My heart, my heart wants to jump inside my veins with its antiquated fighter pilot leather hat all bloody and beating and broke, and sail away to I don’t fucking know where. I can’t think straight. I can feel’s Gorga’s mouth on mine. I know it’s kind of crazy. But I can feel it. MMM. I look at screens, at little words announcing that something is new, new, old, respond, respond to it.
I’m no speed dial whore, but I’ve written songs about them. The speed dial strumpets won’t let me aerate my call in fix. Then the call begins This would be the call that would bring us back together again, Gary, Ray, me. It was Gary on the line. As I mentioned, he could disguise his voice amazingly, considering. I knew it was him. So I listened.